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Comment by sippingabonedry | Hacker News Reader

Is this supposed to be funny?

Hard to comprehend how we've gone from Norm MacDonald being so relentlessly bold he was fired, to this sterility, in 30 years.

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I smirked at the opening joke. But yeah, in true SNL fashion, it's toothless. In this case, they repeated the same joke, with a bunch of nonsequiters. Pretty typical.

SNL has never been funny, at least not in my adulthood. For instance, I got chummed by YouTube, and hooked into watching Tiny Horse, which was embarrassing for both the actors and viewers alike. The the skits play like pre-recorded improv.

Recently I was channel surfing and caught some of the early seasons of SNL (Murray, Chase, Belushi, Radner, etc.). Someone syndicated the episodes into 30 minute shows with a few skits per show. They actually weren't as good as I remembered. Maybe one skit was funny per show. Maybe it was just something new and different in the 70's, with people making jokes about pot use and such. But it didn't really stand the test of time.

haven't watched yet, but, if this is how Art is received (in whatever form), then what is polished and presented on a platter (being turned down left, right and centre by commenters when the real audience is sitting in front of them, secondary to the camera that is worth more than their monthly paycheque or whatever other leverage the production machine behind the troupe has) needs to have a solid bleeding-edge punchline but also seasoned actors and entertainers willing to stand up to deliver it on time, (live but also not at risk of being delisted, demonetized, or put under an NDA that prevents you from speaking in any form of media unknowingly for exchange for a measly fiat currency), and then go online and search for themselves to find tips to improve for next week's show that people aren't tuning into as much live partially due to the discrepancies in the capitalistic system that's being pointed out nightly in comedy clubs around the globe, but, gotta be there to hear it & gotta be here to advance it - just not all the time, please. (reminder to myself in a way)

It's a 3 minutes video. How can you write such a long essay about it with so many opinions without stopping 3 minutes to watch it?

because it's SNL, I'm obviously going to watch it. What I wanted to ask, though, first, may I see the Art critic's credentials before I consume the piece of Art being criticized? [edit]"Video unavailable The uploader has not made this video available in your country" lol I guess it ain't obvious.

> Hard to comprehend how we've gone from Norm MacDonald being so relentlessly bold he was fired, to this sterility, in 30 years.

Is it, though?

Wouldn't it be more strange if the former didn't eventually lead to the latter?

Listen to a Dario interview. I think it's pretty on the mark

I didn't watch the OP. I just know most actually controversial content almost never makes it to broadcast these days.

Hating on AI or its CEO doesn't seem very risky or controversial (for now [0])

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49824686

Or George Carlin - perhaps it's just me, but modern shows aren't that funny anymore.

I think it correlates with us getting old. They seem plenty funny for 20 year olds, which is why they're popular.

Dario?

30 years is a long ass time. Did you miss what happened to the Simpsons over 30 years?

Man, the Simpsons stopped being funny a few years in, I have no idea what they’ve even been doing since then.

"A few years" is like ten, in their case. Homer v New York is like season 9 or 10

But it falls off very quickly after that, that it's still on the air today is elder abuse

I think they are joking. I would be surprised if someone thinks that 30 fucking years are too little time to something to change

I’m surprised that people expect no change over 30 years. Of course a show like SNL will change, it’s the cast of Theseus.

The show wouldn't be the same even if they had the same cast. People change as they get old, the humour changes as well. As people say: the only constant in life is change.

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